It seems like just yesterday I was posting about the invitations I created for my thirtieth birthday party. And now, The Dirty Thirty Debutante Ball is on Saturday!

There’s plenty to do between now and then – including cleaning my house for our overnight guests! So I’ll leave you with an inspiration board to give you an idea of what I think a Dirty Thirty Debutante Ball looks like. Keep in mind that some of these photos come from fabulous parties that I don’t have the budget or set-up time to re-create. So while I won’t be able to accomplish things to their scale, it’s the feel I want to create. Should be fun for all!

I believe I recently mentioned that there was some planning going on for my upcoming (gulp!) 30th birthday. There’s a semi-tradition among my friends to throw a surprise party for this milestone birthday but I couldn’t let someone else have all the fun planning!
The theme is a little… out there. But it came to me during a moment of inspiration when chatting with some friends about an ad one of them saw for a cotillion in Missouri (long story). And “The Dirty Thirty Debutante Ball” was created. You may be wondering, “What does a ‘Dirty Thirty Debutante Ball’ look like?” An excellent question. Guests are encouraged to dress up as a dirty debutante – which is whatever they want it to be – give it a whiskey tango twist, a rocker edge or glitz and glam it up. It’s basically their excuse to wear whatever you want! The ladies will be happy to embrace this but I realize some of the guys in attendance may be a little hesitant. Which is fine but they have been challenged channel their inner Keith Richards-David Bowie-Elton John-Prince fashion sense.
But determining how the invitations, decor, entertainment all tie in is the current project that you may see a few posts on in the next month. First up, invitations. You may have noticed, I like to create my own.

More for the fun of it than anything else – there are plenty of a-mazing designers out there I should be using! A little more of my “handiwork” can be found here and here. Please note: this is only when somewhere between 5-20 invitations are being sent. Any more and it would be put in the hands of a pro. Naturally, I wanted to have a little fun creating the Dirty Deb invites. But I’m trying out some Photoshop fun instead of hand-crafting (centering, folding, gluing, etc.). The final product will be revealed later, but here is where some of the inspiration has come from:

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You may be seeing a color scheme here…
I hope to have an inspiration board up soon. But I do want to know – what do you think a Dirty Thirty Debutante Ball would look like?